should've had Lawrence Odonnell argue ACA in front of SCOTUS

[GusFring]

The guy arguing for the government sux

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. He'd have to run and get his law degree in a hurry.

And the attorney for the government doesn't suck - and what he wrote in his brief will ultimately be more important than the oral argument. People assume the oral argument is always the deciding event. It isn't.

[GusFring]

2. u shouldnt need a law degree to argue.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. But the fact is, you do.

You have to be an attorney in good standing with the jurisdiction in which you are licensed, and you have to be admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.

[hifiguy]

3. Indeed.

One has to be admitted to the bar to appear before the Supreme Court, though there is no requirement that you have to graduate from law school to be a justice. But then law schools as we know them now didn't exist in 1788. One learned the law then by apprenticing to a practicing lawyer.

And you are absolutely right that the briefs are 90% of what is considered as argument. As a judge I clerked for once said "I've seen oral argument lose motions, but never win them."

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. When I clerked for an appellate judge

there was only one case I can remember where the oral argument significantly affected the result. The lawyer who wrote the brief was a terrible writer but a good arguer, and he was able to make his points much more clearly during the argument. Opposing counsel was a boring schmuck from a big law firm whose brief (doubtless written by some oppressed associate) went right up to the maximum page limit and was crawling with superfluous citations (in perfect Blue Book form, however). But the old country lawyer with the cowboy boots and the crappy brief ultimately made the most sense when he got to the argument. I'm sure the hoity-toity big firm lawyer thought he had it in the bag. Heh.

[madaboutharry]

6. And then he would have to quickly pass the bar exam.